Yes, they had practiced for this every Thursday. No, he never thought of anything but wanting the football, embracing the moment and fighting through adversity. It's a 60-minute game, things aren't always going to go your way and they have to get prepared for Texas A&M next week.

But a few minutes earlier, McCarron had been locked in an embrace with his father Tony, the snapshot of a 21-17 victory over LSU etched in tears.

"Sometimes," McCarron said, "it can be a lot of pressure playing here at this university, with the tradition of winning and everything and coming back to win a game like that. There were just so many emotions running through me."

It is easy to watch No. 1 Alabama every week and become enamored with the dominance, to get caught up in the machinery of what Nick Saban has built. The Crimson Tide make it easy to forget that a program isn't about football plays and practice plans as much as human beings.

And for a few hours, anyway, those human beings were under the kind of duress that no situational scrimmage could prepare them for. Unchallenged all season, these Alabama players suddenly had 72 yards to go and 94 seconds left to stay alive in the chase for a national championship. They emerged on the other side as possible legends, with McCarron finding freshman T.J. Yeldon on a screen pass to the left side that he turned into the winning touchdown with 51 seconds left.

It was the irony of all football ironies. After blowing out nearly everyone for two years, after blowing a 14-3 halftime lead and after making a series of uncharacteristic mistakes, here was Alabama needing to execute its two-minute drill offense to either remain undefeated or cede the SEC West title to LSU.

Alabama hadn't done a thing in the second half, going three-and-out on four occasions. The one time it got into scoring range late in the third quarter, Yeldon missed the handoff from McCarron line and turned it over to LSU at the 10-yard line. McCarron looked rattled, Alabama was out of timeouts and LSU's defense looked ready to slam the door on the ultimate revenge victory.

But in a drive that seemed to happen even faster than the 49 seconds it officially accounted for, McCarron completed passes of 18, 15, 11 and 28 yards in a span of five plays. And on the final pass, it was the combination of a perfect call from offensive coordinator Doug Nussmeier and tremendous execution by McCarron to loft the pass over the blitzing defense and find Yeldon out in space.

"(Nussmeier) made a great play call. He felt like they were going to bring pressure, and they did," McCarron said. "I felt like it was going to be a good play, I just had to kind of jump off my back foot and get it high and give (Yeldon) a chance."

Said Tony McCarron: "(AJ) said all year long that T.J. is unbelievable, they just have to get him in the right situation. That was the right situation."

And now there is nobody left to say Alabama hasn't been tested, because for it would be hard to imagine any of the championship contenders facing a bigger crucible than this. Kansas State had to force a goal-line fumble at Oklahoma, Notre Dame has survived multiple overtime games and Oregon always has to keep scoring.

But everything here was set up for LSU to pull this off, from having bye week to prepare to the motivation that had built ever since Alabama embarrassed the Tigers in last year's national title game. And when LSU mounted its second-half comeback, with maligned quarterback Zach Mettenberger putting together two long touchdown drives to take a 21-17 lead with 12:58 left, Tiger Stadium became the loudest, wildest environment either team had ever seen.

LSU had already overcome coach Les Miles' awful night on the sidelines to get to that point, including a fake field goal in the second quarter, an onsides kick in the third quarter and a fourth-and-short gamble in the red zone in the fourth quarter ‚?? all of which went nowhere. But when LSU couldn't turn the momentum into any more points ‚?? kicker Drew Alleman missed a 45-yarder with 1:34 to go ‚?? it gave Alabama just the opening it needed.

"In the huddle, a few guys were saying, 'Let's go make history,' " Jones said. "Honestly, it was kind of surreal. It felt like time was slowed down."

And now 9-0 with its biggest hurdle behind, it's about to speed up again. Alabama has had its brush with humanity. Now it's back in championship mode.